1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates generally to nuclear magnetic resonance imaging and, more particularly, to a method of applying threshold filters to both the magnitude and phase images of a complex nuclear magnetic resonance image in an effort to differentiate noise from signal information.
2. Related Art
Image data acquired from nuclear magnetic resonance includes both desirable signal information and unwanted noise. Removing noise from the image data improves boundary detection, visualization of phase images, and quantification of information in general. A simple and relatively effective means of removing noise has been to use a threshold filter on the magnitude images. However, this approach has its limitations and often leads to incomplete noise removal and the loss of some signal information in the image.